Microsoft’s Hotmail and Windows Live disrupted by major online failure

Some of Microsoft’s online services, including Hotmail, Skydrive and Office365, were unavailable for a few hours after a major service failure.

Windows Live suffers service failure (Picture: Getty)

Most users are now thought to be able to use the services, but Microsoft admitted its network had encountered problems in the early hours of the morning.

The company’s Chris Jones wrote on the Windows Live blog: ‘If you’ve been trying to use Hotmail, SkyDrive, or our other Live properties in the last couple of hours you may have noticed problems accessing our services.

‘We’re aware of these issues and actively working to resolve them. We apologise for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.’

This error may be a blow to cloud technology, which Windows Live uses, with people asking whether the system is reliable.

The system crash elicited a huge response from Twitter, with most people left bemused by what had happened.

Tenty tweeted: ‘Oh oh… http://www.hotmail.com and mail.live.com have gone away… Someone in Microsoft is gonna be in BIG trouble :P’

Ianvisits joked that it didn’t matter because no one used Hotmail: ‘Hotmail crashed overnight – cue comments such as “what is it?”, “people still use that?”, “is that the old version of gmail?”‘

Microsoft released a message saying it had fixed the problem early on but was forced to backtrack when more users started reporting errors.

The company was eventually able to fix the problem and released a final blog entry, which said: ‘We have completed propagating our DNS configuration changes around the world, and have restored service for most customers.

‘Depending on your location you may still experience issues over the next 30 minutes as the changes make their way through the network. Thank you for your patience as we have worked to address these issues.’